fools, anakin skywalker (ongoing)

four.

this addition has been edited as of january 2, 2020

CHAPTER FOUR

ARTIE LET OUT A STRANGLED shout as the droid bobbed unsurely, shuttering and whirring with her sudden weight. For a moment, it seemed the probe could not support them both. They sank several feet before the thing managed to right itself, but it could not fly any higher. The droid screeched, confused and indignant, and veered them into oncoming traffic, hundreds of stories above the city floor.

The wind clawed at Artie's face and ripped back her clothes; the pretty braids Padme had done were torn free and her hair whipped over her face. Speeders raced past her on all sides, horns blaring and drivers shouting curses as if Artie could do anything to stop herself. She swore and shrieked, screamed and yelped every time a speeder zipped by, always inches from slicing off her head. Kriff, she thought hopelessly, this is going to be an ugly sight.

Out of nowhere, Artie heard a blaster fire, and the next moment the probe droid exploded. She plunged through the air, a screaming tangle of limbs and hair, and realized with a horrible jolt that these were her last seconds to be alive.

But suddenly, through her mane of yellow hair and the world tumbling around her, Artie caught a flash of movement in her peripheral. A bright yellow airspeeder hovered just beneath her, growing closer and closer by the second until Artie slammed into its fore, right on top of its oversized twin engines. It was pain unlike anything she'd felt before, but at the very least she was no longer plummeting to her death.

"Are you all right?" called a familiar voice. Artie managed to lift her head up enough to find its owner. Anakin sat in the driver's seat, looking frantically back and forth between her and the skylane.

"No," Artie groaned. She hoped she hadn't broken a leg.

Anakin threw an arm back and held out his hand. "You need to get off of the engines, they'll scorch you. I'll pull you over--hurry, though, I only have one set of eyes!" Artie did her best to rise into a wobbly crouch, which was almost impossible with Anakin's wild piloting. She snagged his hand and he helped her leap into the open cockpit; she was breathing so hard she felt that coupled with the pain, she might pass out. "Talk to me Artie," Anakin urged, "can you see straight?"

Artie blinked until things came back into focus. "Sort of . . ." she mumbled. Her head throbbed like she'd been kicked in the skull.

"I can't take you back to the apartment yet," Anakin said, "I have to follow the creep who planted the kouhuns. They blasted the droid from that Koro-Two," he pointed up ahead at a closed-cockpit speeder zipping through the lanes. "I watched it happen, that's how I found you."

"Lucky me!" Artie said, voice cracking with the effort it took to talk above the city's chaos. "You've saved two lives in ten minutes, Skywalker, that's got to be a record."

She thought he might have smiled. "My record's actually three lives saved in ten minutes. This is just a normal day's work."

Artie risked a laugh, but a splitting pain in her ribs cut it short. She winced and tried to sit up straighter. "Is Obi-Wan coming? Do you have any backup?"

Anakin kept his eyes ahead as he moved deftly through the oncoming traffic, weaving between lanes and veering them between buildings. The assassin had definitely caught on to them and seemed to be pulling out every stop to lose them in the fantastically lit maze that was Galactic City. "Look, do you want to catch the little maggot or what?"